University students 'cannot spell'

Standards of spelling among university students are now so bad that lecturers
are being urged to turn a blind eye to mistakes.

By Graeme Paton, Education Editor

2:23PM BST 06 Aug 2008

Many undergraduates misspell basic words such as "their", "speech" or even "Wednesday" in essays, it is claimed.

First year students are the worst offenders, despite already spending at least 13 years in the education system.

Standards have deteriorated to such an extent that one leading academic has been forced to ignore common errors altogether.

Dr Ken Smith, a senior lecturer in criminology at Bucks New University, said "atrocious" spelling was rife among new undergraduates, with many failing to apply basic rules, such as "i before e, except after c". The words "weird", "seize", "leisure" and "neighbour" are regularly misspelt by students, he said.

The comments come amid growing fears that many sixth-formers are leaving school lacking basic skills.

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Some universities have already extended courses by a year to give weak students extra tuition in core subjects that they failed to pick up in the classroom.

Last year, another academic claimed that British undergraduates had a poorer grasp of English than some foreign students.

Dr Bernard Lamb, a reader in genetics at Imperial College London, said those from Singapore and Brunei made fewer mistakes in their work, despite speaking English as a second language. Many British students appear to have been through school without mastering basic rules of grammar and punctuation, or having their errors corrected, he said.

Writing in Times Higher Education magazine, Dr Smith said mistakes were now so common that academics should simply accept them as "variants".

"Teaching a large first-year course at a British university, I am fed up with correcting my students' atrocious spelling," he said. "But why must we suffer? Instead of complaining about the state of the education system as we correct the same mistakes year after year, I've got a better idea. University teachers should simply accept as variant spelling those words our students most commonly misspell."

He lists 10 words which are most regularly misspelt by students, including "February", "ignore", "truly" and "queue".

"I could go on and add another 10 words that are commonly misspelt - the word 'misspelt' itself of course, and all those others that break the 'i' before 'e' rule - but I think I have made my point," he said.

Jack Bovill, chairman of The Spelling Society, said: "All the data suggests that there are more and more students at university level whose spelling is not up to scratch. Universities are even finding they have masters-level students who cannot spell."